Patrons residing in Idaho Falls School District 91 voted against the district’s $250 million bond request on Tuesday.

The measure garnered 11,120 votes, 57.98 percent, but fell short of the 66.67 percent supermajority required to pass. There were 8,059 votes or 42.02 percent against the bond.

“We are really disappointed with the outcome,” District 91 Superintendent Jim Shank said. “We very obviously got the majority again but that isn’t enough here. We are really going to have to look at what we have and do what we can, but our current plan is no longer possible.”

The 2022 bond was the third consecutive bond to fail in District 91, all by similar margins.

The district’s last approved bond was 10 years ago. In 2017 and again in 2018, the district’s bond efforts also received 58percent of the vote.

Idaho Falls School District 91 officials have said that eight of the district’s 18 schools have overcrowding issues, with some of the most overpopulated schools being Idaho Falls High School at 141 percent capacity and Sunnyside Elementary School at 145 percent.

The bond measure would have been used to build a new Idaho Falls High School on a site on 49th South to replace the current facility, as well as for extensive renovations to Skyline High School, including the addition of a new auditorium, and adding two new elementary schools to the district, one in south Idaho Falls and a larger elementary school that would replace Temple View Elementary School in north Idaho Falls.

With the bond failure, district officials are headed back to the drawing board, working to ease the burden of overcrowding and multiple safety issues throughout the district.

“Capacity and safety issues are still there and they will have to be addressed,” Shank said. “We have to figure out how to educate our students safely.”

District 91 has not added new square footage in the district since the 1990s, with its last renovations in 2012 being used to rebuild Dora Erickson, Ethel Boyes, Edgemont and Longfellow elementary schools, not adding any new schools.